All the Comforts of Home
by notunbroken
Summary: Post-Season-4 AU. Sharon and Andy manage the domestic tribulations of unpacking and wrangling time off. (Fluffier than a bag of cotton balls.)


_A/N: Hey, everyone. Back with another migrated older story. I wrote this one after season 4, I believe, and it's since been made AU by canon (unfortunately). But I think it still stands well, in its own fluffy and humorous way. I hope you enjoy!_

* * *

With arms crossed, Sharon inspects boxes stacked three and four high across what is supposed to be the dining room. Their cardboard flanks are labeled with black marker, in Andy's blocky print. The descriptions—"kitchen," "LR," "dining/garage," "random"—are unhelpful under the circumstances.

She draws a deep breath through her nose and turns to the glass doors overlooking the patio. Early morning light filters through the tree canopy shading the neighborhood. The sight provides a tranquil contrast to the task awaiting across the room.

This is new. Sharon has visited the house only a few other times, mostly under the harsh midday sun, once at dusk, always with practicalities clouding her perception. Last night was the first night. It was smooth until around 2 a.m., when she and Andy discovered their new neighbors' motion-activated spotlights point into their bedroom. A pillow over the head isn't a tenable solution, even if it provided a moment of levity in the annoyance. She drifted back to sleep on visions of decor-conscious blackout curtains.

But now, on the first morning, she can take time to admire the yard—their yard —in the warm haze of a new day. As the sky lightens, she can block out everything they still need to do, the list growing ever-longer in her mind. This house will be home, before long. Contentment traces her spine from where she curls her toes against the floor.

This is good. This will be normal.

The morning lacks just one essential ingredient.

She steps closer to the doors, slides the latch free and pulls the heavy glass panel to the side. Bird chirps and a gentle breeze filter into the room. The low level road noise that was a near-constant companion at her condo is conspicuously absent, leaving no cover for the floorboard creaking behind her.

Sharon smirks toward the screen door. "Yeah, you can't sneak up on me here."

"I never tried to sneak up on you before. Those high-rise floors are quiet." Andy's voice is still cracked with sleep. He plants his palms on her shoulders and presses a kiss to her temple. "I couldn't sleep with all the nature going on outside."

"Oh, the horror," she says, moving his hands to her waist.

After a moment watching the birds flitting between the trees, he says, "Pretty nice view, huh?"

"Mmhm." Sharon intertwines their fingers. For the umpteeth time, she struggles to describe how much she appreciates Andy's house-hunting efforts. He'd approached the task with the fierce focus he applies to investigations, pulling together sheafs of listings and sifting through them with singular focus. Any address she mentioned he'd already reviewed and passed into the 'maybe' pile for her to review, or discarded for not meeting their criteria.

She'd only just started reading through the maybes when a particular house caught his attention wholesale. His enthusiasm was like a tide rolling in, buoying them through the long process of buying the property, the tedium of inspections and banks and paperwork.

Sharon would rate the process as less painful than she'd imagined, but she also hadn't borne the bulk of the effort. If they'd depended upon openings in her schedule and gaps where her attention was otherwise unoccupied, they'd still be negotiating over a thin pile of listings. Now, standing in the house that passed his assessment, she's grateful beyond words.

She settles for resting her head back against his shoulder. "You did a good job."

"I'm just glad it worked out." He buries his nose in the crook of her neck and mumbles, "And now that my move is over, I get to enjoy the good part."

She has an idea where his train of thought leads, and it might be worth diverting. At least temporarily. "Which is...organizing your stuff?"

"Ah, no." He lifts his head, as if just now realizing his boxes would have to be unpacked. "A day off work."

"Two days off work," she clarifies, squeezing his hands. "Andy, you know you can take time off without a significant life event, right?"

"Nah, gotta keep it for special occasions." As if inspired by this, he adds, "I think I'm gonna make waffles."

"Right," Sharon sighs. Her morning tranquility has ended. "About that." She turns around, pulling him with her. "We have a big problem."

"What?"

She nods toward the boxes. "You've buried the coffeemaker."

"I didn't bury anything."

"Okay," she directs her eyes skyward with a grin. " _Someone_ buried your coffeemaker."

Andy frees his hands from hers. "No big deal, it's gotta be right here." He approaches the wall of boxes, still early-morning disheveled and rubbing at his neck. He squints at his own writing and grimaces. "Somewhere."

Had she known it wouldn't be in a box marked "ESSENTIALS," packed with filters and grounds, Sharon wouldn't have left her own waiting to be packed at the condo.

"Here," Andy lifts the first box he finds with some variation of "kitchen" on its side and drops it onto to the nearest counter. He peels the tape from across its top, but his face falls once he gets the flaps open. "Uh…" Just as quickly, though, he produces a box of buckwheat baking mix. "Waffle supplies!"

Sharon quirks an indulgent eyebrow. "And the iron?"

"Ye of little faith," he says, moving onto another box.

"Sure." She leaves him there, interrogating his boxes, to pursue an alternate lead on caffeine.

Down the hall, the master is as disheveled and box-busy as the rest of the house. She picks yesterday's jeans from the top of a suitcase. Shedding the faded Dodgers shirt she pulled on over shorts last night, she digs around for something to replace it.

By the time she returns to the kitchen, carrying a box of coffee and a bag of breakfast supplies from the Starbucks down the block, Andy has opened a half dozen boxes. An assortment of their former contents lay scattered over the counters and floor; tumblers, bowls, potholders, plates, jarred olives, spatulas, dried fruit, whisks, saucepans. The coffeemaker is still missing.

He stands centered in the melee of gadgetry and pantry staples with his back to her, his phone pinned between his ear and shoulder. As Sharon steps over a spice rack and several skillets, he replies to whomever is on the other side of the call.

"And that's my problem because?" His teasing delivery provides a solid clue who he's speaking to.

"Abandoned? Please. You've known this was coming for how many weeks?"

Sharon sets her haul on the counter. The bag rustles when she pulls two paper cups from within it. The sound draws Andy's attention. He turns with careful movements, still balancing his phone on his shoulder as he frees a canister set from its newspaper wrapping.

"I'm, uh, unpacking." He says this with little conviction, eyes fixed on the coffee. "Yes, I'm serious." With the discarded newspaper wadded and thrown into a bag near his feet, he sets the canisters next to the stove. "Nope. Not gonna happen."

The conversation seems to be headed nowhere. Sharon holds a coffee out to him and asks, "Would you like help with that?"

He hesitates just long enough to stretch on a conspiratorial grin, then hands her the phone. He takes the coffee with a nod. "Be my guest."

Provenza is halfway through a rant when she raises the phone to her ear. His voice drones through the tinny speaker. "...and now this DA guy, whatever his name is, is _lingering_ around. I don't have any way to distract him, since everyone else is out with RHD, and I certainly don't have the will to deal with him myself. So I need you to please find an excuse to come in, before I lose what's left of my mind."

Sharon lets him hang. She sips her coffee, wincing against its scalding heat, biding her time until he says, "Flynn? Hello?"

"Are you sure you can't come up with a distraction, Lieutenant?"

"Uh, Captain." His change in tone is the voiced equivalent of his back straightening. "How's the move going?"

"About half finished with another long day to go."

"Right, right." He clears his throat. "Well, I don't know how much of that you caught…"

"Enough to know I need to remind you we're on leave for a full forty-eight hours—"

"—Yes, but Captain—"

"—and we're not even," she rolls her wrist to glance at her watch, "forty-eight _minutes_ into that time."

Andy chuckles and leans back against the cabinets. On the phone, his partner pleads. "I wouldn't ask, but I am in need of some serious help here."

"I suggest you grin, bear it, and go to Chief Taylor if it becomes a turf war."

"Oh God. That's the last thing I want." He must sense she's trying to end the conversation, because he rushes to add, "What if Mr. DA Whatshisface needs to talk to you?"

At the counter, Andy glances between the bagels tucked inside the bag—one everything, one wheat—to several more unopened boxes along the opposite wall.

"Tell him he's no use to me if he doesn't know where to find a coffeemaker, waffle iron, or, apparently, a toaster in my new kitchen." She smiles at Andy, who has moved to crouch next to another box and is once again pulling tape, this time while good-naturedly mumbling about demands. "Otherwise, I will see him, you, and everyone else on _Wednesday_."

"Okay, but Captain?"

"Yes?"

"Would you really miss Flynn _that_ much if I had him come down and—"

Sharon lowers the phone and taps the red button on its screen before she can hear the end of his sentence.

"See, things fall apart when you leave." Andy doesn't look up from the box at his feet.

She casts her eyes around, taking in the kitchen-related debris crowding the room. After a long pull of coffee she says, "I guess so."

He either misses or ignores the rib, focused as he is on removing leftover containers, serving spoons, nested mixing bowls and, at last, a chrome toaster from the box. He lifts the appliance over his head in a victory pose as he stands. "A-ha!"

"Yay," she says, only half-joking, "you're one-for-three."

"Well there's obviously no rush on the coffeemaker now. Or the waffle iron, for that matter." He plugs the toaster into an outlet near the sink. Sharon makes a mental note to move it nearer to the stove—the logical place to keep cooking appliances—later.

It'll be a gradual process, this settling in, but a worthwhile one, too.

"How about waffles tomorrow, once we're unpacked and Rusty's here to eat three or four of them?"

"Unpacked? Tomorrow?" He drops the wheat bagel, unspokenly reserved for Sharon, into the toaster and turns it on. She reaches over to turn the knob several notches to the right. "Oh, right. You prefer your baked goods incinerated."

"Not _incinerated_. Just toasty." She refills her coffee. "You don't think we can be mostly unpacked by tomorrow? At least in here?"

He winces. "That includes getting rid of the extras?"

"I doubt we'll find room for four stockpots and however many colanders or," she gestures toward the assortment of stuff surrounding them, "whatever."

"I have attachments to my cookware."

This is an understatement. Each pan in his kitchen had a specific set of applications. Sharon did her best to commit them to memory, lest she repeat her use of the large cast iron skillet for something as mundane as sauteing squash.

("No, no. That's fine, don't worry about it," he'd said, bent over and squinting into the cabinet next to the stove. But he pulled and re-shelved at least five different pots, pans, and dutch ovens before settling on a second, clearly inferior, choice.)

She glances around the kitchen, taking close note of the boxes still sealed along the wall. "Let's at least fill the top cabinets and go from there."

"Deal." He pauses on his way out of the kitchen to kiss her, drawing the pad of his thumb along her jawline. He pulls back with a smile that makes her chest ache. "I'll change, then we can go get started on your stuff."

He's happy. His contentment calms the tightness in her chest; a mix of material chaos, too much to do in too little time, and no shortage of excitement. The untethered apprehension from weeks ago has faded, leaving her with specific, productive concerns.

Sharon spent too much time, probably, trying to define that apprehension. The result was a mangled mass of memories, more sensation than coherent thought, long-buried and now clawing to the surface. Another time, another place, another context, another person; they're unrelated to the situation at hand, yet just similar enough to taunt. They formed the framework of how she's lived for decades.

Andy sensed the unrest. Even when she told him she was ready—finally, finally—to take this step, he insisted she didn't need to rush. That he didn't want to rush her. It was sweet, in his thoughtful, and still sometimes surprising, way. But he didn't grasp the problem.

They discussed it on a walk from her condo to dinner at a bistro on Vermont, taking the long way. With the sky growing purple in the east, she wrangled the far-ranging thoughts and anxieties into a single point, concentrating it into the most important factor. "If I keep waiting for the perfect time, I'll be waiting forever."

She'd promised herself months earlier that she'd stop dithering. That she would be braver with him. This had been her silent pledge, amongst the beeping medical equipment, antiseptic fumes filtering into every fiber of her clothes, his hands too still and too cold between her own.

The memory tightened her throat as they strolled. She swallowed hard, willed it away so her voice was clear when she said, "And I don't want to wait forever. If you're ready, I'm ready."

"Yeah?" His smile then was the same as this morning's, joy with a hint of disbelief, as if reality might reach out and steal it back.

As always, she couldn't resist beaming back, wanting to project certainty, _Yes, Andy, you deserve nice things._

"Yeah," she squeezed his hand, relishing its warmth. "In the city, though. I don't have the fortitude to commute like you do now."

"Okay," he freed his hand to wrap his arm around her lower back. "We can do that."

And they did.


End file.
